"_Oh, mon Père_," cried Gaultier, "_Je suis un pauvre pécheur, un misérable!_"
The good Father exhorted him to take courage, and to come to a detail of his crimes.
"_Oh, mon Père_," cried he, "I have sold cats for rabbits, and more especially for hares. I have moistened an old hareskin with warm water and bloodied it with chicken's blood, to make my cats and my badgers and my weasels pass for what they really were not. I have cooked up snakes for eels, and dressed vipers _en matelot_. I have sold bad wine of Bois-marly for good wine of Epernay; and, _Oh, mon Père, je suis un pauvre pécheur_."
"Well, well, get on," cried the Norman somewhat impatiently, "I'll give you absolution for all that. All innkeepers do the same. But what more have you done?"
"_Oh, mon Père, je suis un pauvre pécheur_," proceeded Gaultier in a low voice; "I have charged my customers twice as much as I ought to charge. I have vowed that fish was dear when it was cheap; and I have--"
"_Nom de Dieu!_" cried the Norman, getting out of temper with the recapitulation of Gaultier's peccadilloes. "_Nom de Dieu!_ that is to say, in the name of God, I absolve you from all such sins as are common to innkeepers, masters of taverns, cooks, _aubergistes_ and the like--sins of profession as they may be called--only appointing you to kneel before the altar of your parish church for two complete hours, repeating the Pater and the Ave during the whole time, by way of penance;" thought he, for making me hear all this nonsense.--"But come," he continued, "bring up the heavy artillery--that is, let me hear your more uncommon sins. You have some worse things upon your conscience than any you have told, or I am mistaken."
"_Oh, mon Père! Oh, mon bon Père!_" groaned Gaultier, "_Je suis un pauvre pécheur, un misérable_."
"Now it comes," thought the Norman; "_Allons, allons, mon fils, ayez courage! l'Eglise est pleine de miséricorde._"
"There was an old owl in the barn," said Gaultier, "and woodcocks being scarce--"
"_Ventre Saint Gris!_" cried Marteville to himself, "this will never come to an end;" "_Mais, mon fils_," he said aloud, "I have told you, all that is pardoned. Speak, can you charge yourself with murder, treason, conspiracy, sorcery,"--Gaultier groaned--"astrology,"--Gaultier groaned still more deeply--"or of having concealed any such crimes, when committed by others?" Gaultier groaned a third time. The Norman had now brought him to the point; and after much moaning, hesitation, and agony of mind, he acknowledged that he had been privy to a meeting of sorcerers.--Nay, that he had even conducted a notorious Astrologer, a little man in grey, on the road to meet the defunct Père Le Rouge and his companion the Devil, at the old Chateau of St. Loup; and that it was his remorse of conscience for this crime, together with his terror at revealing it, after the menaces of the Sorcerer, that had thrown him into the lamentable state in which he then lay.